


[musical interlude]

by zelsh



Category: Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: M/M, Translation, weird song usage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelsh/pseuds/zelsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miguel comes to Seville like the Summer: fast, unavoidable, from God knows where.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[musical interlude]

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [[minuto musical]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/367437) by [zelsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelsh/pseuds/zelsh). 



> Hi! This is a translation that I made only because I wanted to practice for an exam, so please forgive the mistakes! And as a sidenote, the song they keep going on about is an actual Sevillana (Tu nombre, Rocío) which I’ve completely bastardized in here.

Miguel comes to Seville like the Summer: fast, unavoidable, from God knows where.

-

The way Tulio sees it, one day it’s the usual The fish is really expensive and Catch that fucking thieving kid and the next everything is Miguel, and _Miguel_ , and _do you know this boy, his name’s Miguel_. Tulio avoids him somehow but his name is everything he hears (Miguel and Mi-guel; M-I-G-U-E-L), and according to Raúl he looks like a foreigner, and Romilda tells him that he can apparently write poetry. Fernanda tries to convince him of his ability to produce coins from the space behind the ears, which doesn't sound convincing at all. When he snorts she insists:

“Don't tell me that doesn't pick your interest” kiss, kiss, a hot hand inside his pants. She can’t really expect him to be interested in any Miguel in that moment. “Money from behind the ears, Tulio. That’s your thing. Each one of us” she says, wetly, and squeezes. “Have our thing.”

-

And when the real Summer comes, soon after, it’s so white and unbearable that Tulio can’t decide which newcomer annoys him the most. Heat falls like a blanket over the city, and she can stand as Noble and Undefeated as she wants, but Triana chooses to sleep the sleep of the surrendered.

Someone is singing _your name is breeze and is perfume of the sea_ from a window while Tulio waits in the shadows. The man is snoring so enthusiastically that his hat lifts off his face with every exhalation, as if attempting to fly away, and it’s just one two three steps, and a quick search, and the gold is shining between Tulio’s fingers.

He walks away with a Sevillana in his step, turning the corner, the coins clinking like castanets.

“Mmm, that was a six, tops” the voice comes from his right, and behind the voice comes the boy, blond and green-eyed and _your name is fire and is light_. “And I’m always generous.”

“Ah” and then, “Huh?”

A shrug because _it’s a rosemary blessing_.

“I’ve been told you were the one I should look for in this city, but they didn't mention that you were such a half-arsed thief.”

Tulio crosses his arms and _your name is soil and is sand_.

“Excuse me?” he doesn’t know if he should laugh or take offense, so he decides to stay halfway.

Miguel tsks, getting closer and stealing the best shadowy spot— gold and red and green over white. His hair moves in a breeze that seems to reach just him.

“I’m just saying that that, there, wasn’t very imaginative.”

“That, there, was very effective” Tulio flips a coin, and the sun catches on its surface for a blinding second before Miguel grabs it in midair. He inspects it before giving it back with disinterest.

“Maybe” he says, easily.

“And besides” Tulio insists, frowning. “Imagination doesn’t get you the gold.”

“No, it gets you something much better.” Miguel has jade eyes and not-so-bad-intentions eyes and yournameyournameyourname eyes. “It gets you the _adventure_.”

And it’s a smile and a proposition and an unavoidable deal, one that the city has been murmuring about for weeks like a catchy song, because (softly, far away) _your name will walk inside the chest of whoever follows your path_.

-

Miguel is like the street kids that are on the cusp of adulthood, only he’s not. He’s a foreigner, only he’s not, the same way he’s a son of a whore like the rest of them, only he’s not. He does know how to write poetry, but especially he knows how to make words rhyme with _heart_. If you give me your heart/I’ll sting you with my dart/and I’ll make it look like a work of art. Nobody’s saying they’re good rhymes. Miguel has the good luck of the gold-hearted vandals, a smile that promises nights on the Guadalquivir’s banks and dust in the folds of his shirt, dust on his eyelashes when it doesn’t rain for weeks. He drags Tulio into the least profitable adventures, and he gets them out with just a hat that looks like a cock’s arse and a broken nose. But especially, Tulio, with a new story. Tulio learns how to adjust his plans to make them work with Miguel’s fantasies, and soon they stop being Miguel and Tulio and they start being MiguelandTulio, the name they’ll write songs about when neither of them is around anymore.

-

“I have a surprise for you.”

He says that, and two hours later, under the Puente de Barcas, Tulio wishes he had arrived a few minutes later.

“I can see that.”

And even though he feels like he's talking from under the river’s water the man still hears him, and he pulls his pants up so quickly that he nearly catches his dick. Tulio would laugh if that wasn’t Miguel kneeling down on the mud, his stare steady and his mouth bruised like a ripe fruit. None of them looks at the stranger as he slips away, silent with shame.

“Is this why you don’t need money? Are you following in your mom’s steps?” he says, with a cruelty that he must have stolen from someone else, because the taste is foreign when he lets it roll over his tongue. “Do you get your extra gold doing that?”

Miguel stands up, slowly, and he wipes his mouth on his shirt. Tulio is expecting a punch but instead he gets a smile that doesn’t reach the eyes, and that hits him so much harder.

“Not that.” He feels the rocky arch of the bridge with the palm of his hand and he grabs a lute, drawing a vibrating note from it. “This.”

The shadows under the bridge seem to pack up and then spill within the walls of his attic, where his only candle has gone out a while ago. Miguel’s followed him home, like he does every other night, but instead of sharing his mattress he sits close to the window, tuning his lute under the blueish light of the moon.

“I don’t have bedbugs, you know.” Tulio's voice is raspy but it carries on the still air. He corrects himself. “Just a few, I mean.”

Miguel looks at him from behind the curtain of his hair, and he hesitates a couple of seconds before standing up, his pants a crumpled ball in some corner and the lute in his hand. He falls beside him on the mattress without looking at him. If Tulio extended one hand he could touch the curve of his back. He curls up his fingers instead. 

“So” he clears his throat. “You play the lute.”

Miguel snorts and he plays the beginning of a familiar melody. _Your name is water and is dew_. Tulio smiles.

“Can you teach me?”

He’s always thought that being sanctimonious was for people that could afford it, anyway.

“I can’t believe you’re a thief with fingers as fat as these” Miguel laughs, trying to make him play Re instead of DoReMiFaSol. He puts his hand over Tulio’s to adjust his grip, but the contact is way too brief.

Tulio turns his head. Miguel’s hair smells like the sun and it makes his eyelids feel heavy.

“I don’t have bedbugs, you know” he whispers, stupidly, his heart beating like a flamenco drum box.

Miguel blinks, and his eyelids must feel heavy as well because Tulio can only see a slit of green.

“Just a few, you mean.”

It’s Tulio who starts the kiss, clumsy and sudden, but it’s Miguel who softens and unravels it, slow like a love song. His fingers aren’t thief fingers but delicate, artist fingers, and when they touch him Tulio moans in B-flat major.

“I didn’t know you could play so well.”

Miguel bites his lower lip, and he makes his clothes disappear as easily as he makes coins appear from behind girls’ ears. They lick moans from each other’s mouths, they roll onto the lute, they end up halfway out of the mattress and with their legs intertwined, and the next thing he knows he’s touching Miguel’s hole with two fingers.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure two fingers are enough.” Miguel has emerald eyes and fuck me eyes and fuckmefuckmefuckme eyes. “You have really fat fingers.”

Tulio fucks him from behind, and he doesn’t know how but he hopes that _well_ , and he licks the Guadalquivir that travels down his spine, touching the gold in his hair, writing all the words that rhyme with heart with the tip of his tongue.

“I hope that was a little more than a six.”

He says, and it’s a joke but it’s also a question. Miguel laughs wetly against the hollow of his throat and he nods that

“Yes” and then, “ _yes_.”

They wait for the sun to peek up from behind the Giralda to go to sleep, bright yellow and orange and pink, but before they do Miguel whispers _Hey_ , and _hey, Tulio_ , his voice thick with adventure.

_Hey, Tulio, have you heard of America?_

-

Miguel and Tulio leave Seville like the Summer: fast, unexpected, towards another hemisphere.

 


End file.
